For this month's "Maps of the Month" featurette, I wish to draw your attention to Will Mallia's Flashback: The Quest For Identity (Super NES) maps.

Conrad's lost his memory. He was chased by police and wakes up in a jungle, with only a holocube as a clue as to what he must do. And that is to use "Prince Of Persia-esque" platforming skills to get back to Earth, and the save the planet from those who would destroy it.

Similar to Out Of This World and Blackthorne, this cyberpunk platformer has smooth animation but is dependent on precise control. You may send Conrad off a drop to his doom or run straight into trouble simply by being careless with the buttons. Conrad's going to suffer through a lot of deaths before you can get him his memory back - Will Mallia's maps should help a bit, though we can't promise that it still won't be challenging.

So to recognize the effort put into this 16-bit flashback, Will Mallia's Flashback: The Quest For Identity maps will be known as VGMaps.com's Maps of the Month for August 2009.

Cinematic platformers were one of my most favourite genres of games to map. From the Prince of Persia games to "Heart of Darkness". My favourite scenes are the Titan Jungle, New Washington areas, the Cyber Tower and the Alien homeworld.

I loved playing through both this game and Out Of This World. They had a cinematic quality that was unknown in platformers at the time, even though Flashback is more of a classic platformer (with excellent execution) than Out Of This World (which has way too many scripted events and puzzles and requires a category of its own).

My two favourite parts of the game were the reactor meltdown in New Washington (which got your blood pumping with all the chaos everywhere while emergency red lights keep flashing) and the final escape sequence where you have to make your way back to the ship after sending an explosive charge to the core of the Alien homeworld (back before I learned you could simply leave your teleporter receiver right next to it before going down).

The sad thing is that the 3D sequel, Fade To Black, went mostly unnoticed when it came out and few people even remember it. I never played it, but magazine reviews seemed to indicate it was a much more classic 3D action shooter.

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Current project: Little Samson (NES)

Upcoming project: New Ghostbusters II (NES)

Logged

Current project that I really should try to finish:-Drill Dozer (GBA)-Sonic 3D Blast (Genesis)-Naya's Quest (PC)-Lilly Looking Through (PC)

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